JACKSON - Planning Board members had hoped to vote on a hotly contested solar farm at Six Flags Great Adventure. Instead, tensions flared during a four-hour marathon meeting with a verbal sparring match between board members and the main objectors’ attorney.

Sparks flew just before 10 p.m. Monday, when board Chairman Robert Hudak gave Michelle Donato a 20-minute deadline to finish up her case before allowing public comment and heading into a vote.

“If you don’t have a problem with that, you can appeal,” Hudak said.

“We will certainly do that,” said Donato, who stated that she could not work under the “pressure” of the deadline.

Instead, examination of a stormwater expert lasted more than 90 minutes, delaying public comment and any chance at a vote until Feb. 1.

“This is 12 hours of testimony on one application. Twelve hours,” board member Anthony Russo said.

It was the fourth Planning Board meeting on the joint proposal by Six Flags Great Adventure and KDC Solar LLC, who hope to build a 22-megawatt facility on an undeveloped piece of park property. More than 50 people, many wearing yellow stickers reading “Say No to Six Flags Solar Plan,” attended the meeting.

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Environmental activists gather along the border of a 90-acre forest to denounce Six Flags Great Adventure's plans to clear cut 18,000 trees and build a solar farm.
STAFF VIDEO BY THOMAS P. COSTELLO

The objectors have argued that the best plan would be solar canopies installed throughout the park's 100-acre parking lot. Six Flags has maintained that such a plan isn't feasible, as it would lessen the number of spaces available for visitors.

If the plan is approved, most solar panels would be installed on the ground, with a few canopies in an employee parking lot. Opponents of the project say it’s taking one step forward and two steps back, as it requires the removal of nearly 15,000 trees at the site, identified as irreplaceable and vital to the Pinelands habitat.

At one point, the state Department of Environmental Protection offered to buy the site to stop the solar project in its tracks. Great Adventure said it wasn't interested.

As for equipping the 100-acre parking lot with solar panels, Ronald Celentano, a solar industry consultant hired by the objectors, told the board, “The amount of cost to put up a solar canopy over a parking lot is questionable, but we don’t know how much it’s going to cost at the end of the day to put a ground mount in.”

The tree removal prompted six environmental groups — Clean Water Action, the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, Save Barnegat Bay, the New Jersey Sierra Club, Environment New Jersey and Crosswicks-Doctors Creek Watershed Association — to file suit against the township, Six Flags Great Adventure and KDC Solar.